Chris had to go to Japan recently to help out with his deathly ill grandmother. He brought his new Verizon iPhone4 with him. While he was there, Verizon pushed a series of updates to his phone, and that racked up over $600 in global roaming charges. When he called customer service, they told him the charges were valid and nothing could be done. He couldn’t even get retroactively added to an international plan as Verizon says they don’t have one anymore that covers Asia/Japan.

The latest salvo in the AT&T and Verizon Cola Wars was for Big Blue to bribe all its users into staying with a surprise gift of 1000 bonus rollover minutes. Some users thought the text message announcing the free minutes was some kind of spam or scam – and who could blame them? – but it was definitely sent out by AT&T, as confirmed to Consumerist by AT&T PR. They said, “It’s real – we’ve done this before…it’s a way of thanking our customers.” If you didn’t get the text, some users, even those who weren’t targeted by the initial blast, have reported the free minutes showing up on their account after texting “yes” to 11113020.

UPDATE: It’s here. Plug your iPhone into your computer and fire up the iTunes. As even those who live in remote fishing villages probably know, today Apple is set to drop iOS4 on the streets. It’s the operating system that the iPhone4 ships with, but owners of previous generation phones will be able to upgrade to it and enjoy some of the same benefits. A friend of mine who tried it out by installing iOS 4.0 developer’s beta said,